Forty years ago this month, two events combined to change the world and create a legend: the film Enter the Dragon was released, and the film’s star, the 32-year-old Bruce Lee, died in unclear (verging on mysterious) circumstances.

The significance of the movie is that Enter the Dragon brought martial arts films – indeed martial arts themselves – out of the shadows and into the mainstream of global popular culture. There had been martial arts films before, of course: Hong Kong cinema was defined by them. But these were mainly ‘sword and sorcery’ wuxiapian – films whose modern versions include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers. However, at the start of the Seventies, Bruce Lee (below) burst in and popularised an alternative genre: the unarmed kung fu film.

The success of his Hong Kong films (The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon) made Hollywood sit up and take notice. They had known about Bruce Lee before: he had played Kato in The Green Hornet, and earned a living by teaching kung fu to the Hollywood glitterati, choreographing film fight scenes and taking bit parts in TV shows.

Unfortunately, the stigma attached to Asians in the era of the Vietnam War meant no Hollywood producer would risk casting Lee in a major role. But, on a visit to Hong Kong, Lee was greeted as a star: The Green Hornet was a huge hit in Hong Kong, so Lee was offered major roles. Meanwhile, US film companies noticed that imported martial arts films were drawing big crowds in black and Hispanic cinemas.

Related Articles

A handwitten poem by Bruce Lee, taken from The Treasures of Bruce Lee, by Paul Bowman, published by Carlton

Sensing an untapped audience demographic, they took the plunge with Enter the Dragon – but they still divided the lead role three ways: Lee played the superlative fighter, a Shaolin monk; John Saxon played an ersatz Bond character; and Jim Kelly took the mandatory black role of the era: the good guy who is killed early on.

This film exploded into the world. It showed Westerners something they’d never seen before: amazing martial arts. A whole ‘Bruce Lee generation’ grew up in the wake of this transformation: the Tarantinos, the Wu Tang Clans, untold numbers of kids, choreographers, athletes, artists, cinematographers, and more, whose inspiration continues to be Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee's Kung Fu notes pad with his sketches PHOTO: Carlton

Sadly, in his moment of success, Bruce Lee was already dead. But he was therefore always larger than life, forever young, forever invincible – forever the original and best.